Leadership - What Really Matters: A Handbook on Systemic Leadership (Management for Professionals)

Chapter 2

Occupation or Calling: What Makes

for Good Leadership?

Management is the most creative of all arts, for its medium is human talent itself.

Robert S. McNamara

John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi and Sir Winston Churchill were exemplary
leaders of nations. With regard to leading workers, Heidrick and Struggles ask,
“What is good leadership?” This is a complex and highly philosophical question,
which has been met with innumerable, often opposing answers from management
schools and theory. Typically, leaders are evaluated concerning their practices,
leading to more confusion than clarification.
A practical increase in value is offered by the question of what good leadership
depends on. There is a mountain of management literature that can be referred to on
this topic. Searching the literature for what is paramount to good leadership, four
critical factors emerge: the craft of leadership, the leader, the relationship between
leader and led and the leadership situation.
Included in the following sections are the most well-known and important
aspects of the four factors. While comprehensive coverage of management theories
is not included, the following discussion of these four factors is sufficient to guide
those on the journey of perfecting their leadership skills.
The selection of concepts here serves as a basis and delineation of relationship-
oriented leadership. I feel it would be counterproductive and narrow-minded to
ignore the work performed and valuable existent findings in the broad field of
leadership.
To give away the ending: all four answers to the question of which factors good
leadership depends on are examined one by one. Yet these answers alone are not
sufficient for practice. Otherwise there would hardly be such a wealth of manage-
ment training, seminars and manuals. Thus we will ask ourselves: “What does good
leadership depend on?” and examine the old and new approaches to leadership.

D.F. Pinnow,Leadership - What Really Matters, Management for Professionals,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20247-6_2,#Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

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